


==>Roxy: Expect

by Quilly



Series: Married with Grubs [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Gen, Phase One, and also have a really weird and unhealthy relationship, and create a third partner, featuring the appearance of Jasper English-Lalonde, in which jake and roxy do the horizontal tango one too many times, incredibly self-indulgent babyfic, of the Married with Grubs event, part of the Sherlockbound/Fun with Dirk and Jane universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 19:15:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quilly/pseuds/Quilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Roxy Lalonde and oooooh, man.</p>
<p>(Part of the Married with Grubs event for the Sherlockbound/Life with Dirk and Jane series. Phase One: Babies, 2/6)</p>
            </blockquote>





	==>Roxy: Expect

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, all! This is an event going on at the Sherlockbound askblog (asksherlockbound.tumblr.com, check the sidebar for the Married with Grubs button) and I'm moving the drabbles over to here for other people to access, so voila! This is the second of six in Phase One: Babies of that event! If you're curious about what Sherlockbound/Life with Dirk and Jane is, check my page for the series Life with Dirk and Jane!
> 
> Enjoy!

Your name is Roxy Lalonde and you really wish you weren’t you right now.

 

Pink’s your favorite color. Always has been, always will be, because pink is just… _you_. Y’know? It’s bubbly and it’s bright and it’s happy! And totes awesome. Because how much cooler would any and all action flicks be if the heroines toted pink guns? A billion times cooler, that’s what.

However, today pink is not your friend.

Pink is the color you were hoping was _not_ going to show up on your pee stick of choice.

You scrunch your hands through your hair and shudder through a sob. You are such an idiot.

You run through your list of options. Option one: terminate. You were never expecting to have kids anyway, and eliminating the problem before it’s much bigger than a teeny cluster of cells that make you puke embarrassingly seems like a pretty attractive option to you. Option two: adoption. You feel kinda bad for the little mass growing in you, such as it is. It’s not its fault its mom is stupid (shut up you did not just call yourself its _mom_. Bad idea, Ro-Lal). It’s an accident, but it could make some other set of people prepared to be parental units happy. Though that means you’d have to carry it. Again, see option one. Option three…no. You’re not entertaining that one, at least not until you’ve talked to Janey.

You think about having to tell Jake and your throat kinda clogs up. Just your luck you’re actually on your placebo and forget about other types of birth control the one time you’re both lonely and desperate just before he leaves for a two-month-long excursion into the Sahara Desert. Whoop-de-doo.

A small part of your head that sounds like Dirk mutters that if you and Jake weren’t so hell-bent on staying together when you have no business being around each other, this wouldn’t have happened.

Another part that sounds like Jane says to think through your options carefully and pick the one that’ll make you happy. You grin involuntarily. Good ole Janey-Jane. Even in your head she’s kind and patient with you.

You need your actual Janey-Jane before you drive yourself completely cray-cray.

Now-now.

You text ahead, receive permission from the new parents to come over, and hightail it thataways. You’ve been missing their cute little bun, anyway!

Said cute little bun is the first thing you see when Jane opens the door, her little head covered in fuzzy dark hair and brilliant orange eyes open and blinking.

“Hey, Sebby!” you squeal, and, ignoring your friend, snatch her up. At two months old, she isn’t exactly fun to be around yet, but she’s at least able to wind her tiny fist in some of your hair and gum on it. She’s so cute, you could die.

“Hello, Roxy,” Jane says, and steps aside to let you in. “Is everything okay?”

You know what she’s thinking.  You usually call when you wanna come over. Also, you think your mascara is still smudged from crying (why are you always crying now, this sucks).

“I gots a problem, Janey,” you say, not looking at her. She’s doing the deduction thing right now. You wonder if you’ve put on any weight recently to make her guess at your true purpose, then have to stop that train of thought to pull your hair back out of Seb’s mouth.

“Oh?” Jane says, and sets a tray of snacks at the kitchen table (she loves that table, and you do, too! It’s a great romantic story and you squeal every time Jane rubs her hand lovingly over the surface). “What kind of problem?”

You carry Seb with you when you go to sit down, and shove a cookie in your mouth to buy a little time.

“Well…” you say, and take a few short quick breaths. “You see Seb here?”

“I do,” Jane says, and grins when Seb coos.

“Uh,” you say, and bounce the baby a little more. “I…might be growing my own. Involuntarily. Ish.”

Jane frowns, then her jaw drops and her eyes get big. There we go.

“Oh, Roxy,” she says, and her voice is neutral as it can be while also being surprised, “what—how—”

“I think you know the how well as I do, Detective,” you wink, but it’s a little lackluster, because Jane doesn’t even blush or snort. “That’s kinda what happens when two idiots have sex without protection thinking her birth control is gonna keep you covered and then you find out weeks later she was not actually on her birth control and now she is up a creek in the family way.”

Seb gurgles. What a _cute_.

“I see,” Jane says. “You…haven’t told anyone else? Not even your sister?”

“Rose?” you say, and shake your head. “Naw. Don’t wanna tell Rosie until I figure out what to do. Gotta set an example, y’know?” To say nothing of the fact that Rose and Kanaya already have two kids and Rose gave birth to the second one, and that Wednesday Maryam-Lalonde is one of the other cutest kids in the world, to name one of the seven you now know in your group of friends. But Jane gets it—you don’t want another thing for Rose to be disappointed in you over, that’s all. Though she’ll probably be disappointed you didn’t go to her first. But still. You wanna figure this out on your own before you tell her.

“So what are you going to do, Rox?” Jane asks. Seb starts getting a little fussy, and you bounce her. “I mean…this is big. Huge.”

“Mondo,” you agree. “I haven’t figured it out yet. I mean, I just now found out for sure. I guess I could get it…y’know…taken care of.”

“You could,” Jane nods. “It’s entirely up to you what you do, but I just want you to look at all the options carefully before you decide. I don’t want you to do anything you regret.”

“Little late for that, Janey,” you say, and mean to play it off as a joke but it just comes out of you sad and bitter. Seb fusses a little more.

“I did try to warn you that you and Jake living together would be a bad idea,” she says, and she sounds tired. You know. You know she did, and you can’t even be mad at her for saying I Told You So, because she totally did and you still aren’t listening. “Oh, wow, Roxy, are you going to tell Jake?”

You take a moment to appreciate the fact that Jane automatically assumes Jake’s the father. Well, he is, no use beating around the bush. You haven’t gotten any action that wasn’t English in a really, really long time. Which you kinda hate, since you’re not a thing and you don’t expect anything for him, but sometimes you wish he would think about you when he’s away and not do the idiot thing and fall in love with everyone he sees only so long as he sees them. He gets laid when he goes, he gets laid when he comes back, and you are sick of feeling empty and secondhand with him.

At the very least, you wish you could get laid by someone other than him too, dangit!

Well…actually not much anymore. You might be off sex forever. Forever and ever and ever.

“I’m thinking it out, Jane,” you say, and you sound tired, too. Seb starts to cry, and Jane bustles around the table and takes her from you. Your arms feel a little empty. You watch as Jane changes Seb’s diaper, and then watch as she gets a bottle ready and sticks it in the kid’s mouth. She looks so natural like this, all motherly-like and round and cute. You’re angles and bones. What are you even gonna look like with a bowling-ball tummy? You press your hand against the flat of your stomach and swallow hard.

“Whatever you choose to do, Roxy,” Jane says, and her voice is tenderness itself as she looks at her daughter, “you need to tell Jake. You need to sit down, and have an actual conversation about what’s going on between the two of you. It’s not fair for him to leave and have all the adventures while you sit around and pine for him or anybody else who’ll have you.” She looks up, and her eyes are very sharp and hard, and you feel a tingle of fear in your spine. Motherhood has made Jane even more dangerous.

You want to take offense at what she says, but that’s more or less the sum of it. You kinda hate your life and you hate yourself for being this stupid.

“Jake gets back in three weeks,” you say slowly. “I think I have another month and a half or something before I’m on the crazy train for good. I’ll tell him when he gets back.”

“No,” Jane says, and hands you her phone, “you call him now and tell him to get home as soon as he can. You’re not going to put this off until the last minute.”

You take her phone and put it on the table, and get out your own phone. She watches you, hawklike, and you suck it up and dial the number he gave you for this trip.

“Roxy!” he says, and though his voice is grainy it’s chipper. “Jolly good to hear from you!”

“Jake,” you say, and look at Jane, who nods, “there’s kind of an emergency back home. I need you right now.”

“Erm—right now? Is everything alright? Are you hurt?”

“I’m okay,” you say. “I just—look, it’s important, alright? I wouldn’t call you home if it wasn’t. But I really, really need you home right now.”

He’s silent, and you hear wind and him talking with someone.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he says. “Hang in there, Roxy. I’m coming.”

There are no words for what his voice does to you. He should not be allowed to sound that gallant and worried and sweet.

“Thank you,” you say, and hang up.

“He said he’ll be home as soon as he can,” you say, and bury your head in your arms.

“Life would be so much easier,” you mumble, “if we just loved each other right instead of like idiots.”

Jane pats your arm.

You hang around at Jane’s for another hour, then go home. You have some thinking to do.

Jake gets home two days later, early, and you’re asleep when he sits down beside you and strokes your hair out of your face. You yawn and roll over into his warmth.

“Is everything alright, Roxy?” he murmurs, and you shake your head, eyes squeezed shut, and bury your face in his leg. He strokes your hair some more and waits until you wake up some more and sit up.

“In a manner of speaking,” you say, and he frowns, but doesn’t interrupt. “So you know how you and me do the horizontal tango sometimes?”

He snorts through an atrocious giggle and nods. You smack his arm as his hand rests on your knee (not now, you’re trying to be serious).

“As it turns out,” you say carefully, “the horizontal tango has the added side-effect of creating a third partner when the participants aren’t careful and go in with the proper equipment.”

His brows furrow. “I don’t…”

“There’s a bun in my oven,” you say. “I’m gestating. I’m gravid. This is one doodle that can’t be undid, homeskillet.”

Apparently not even quoting a quirky movie about teen pregnancy that you know for a fact he’s seen can get through to him, because he still has the same blank look on his face.

“I’m pregnant, you putz,” you finally snap.

You almost wish you had a camera. His face is better than Dirk’s was when Jane told him about Sebby. For all of two seconds. Then it crumbles and he looks lost and very, very young. He’s in his thirties, for cripe’s sake, it’s not like you’re teenage best friends with a propensity for dry sarcasm and no idea of your future. You’re making your living coding. He makes his tomb-raiding. You’re financially sound and the apartment isn’t in a bad area to raise a kid. You work from home already. In theory, it could work, provided you pad down some corners and convert the extra room into the kid’s room.

But you don’t even know if that’s a viable plan for you, because you have no idea what to do, because Jake isn’t giving you anything other than a horrified stare.

“I—I—are you sure I’m—?” he splutters. You have a strong desire to punch him in the throat. You give him a look that conveys such. He takes your point.

“Wow,” he finally says. “Uh. Wow.”

You pull your knees up to lean on them and nod.

“Yup.”

You sit there in silence for a while, waiting on Jake to process it.

“So,” he says, drawing the “o” out longer than humanly necessary. “What…uh…what are you going to do?”

You frown. “I was hoping _we_ could talk about this and figure something out.”

He flinches a little at the “we.” This sucks.

He clears his throat, coughs, clears it again, and releases a slow breath through his mouth.

“Right. Uh.” He rubs his hands together a little. “Erm. What…what are _we_ …going to do?”

“There’s a few things we can do,” you say, and feel very tired of explaining this to him. Surely he’s gotta know what goes down when a lady is preggers and has no idea what to do with the baby. “We could get an abortion. For starters.”

Jake glances at you, then away, and bites his lip.

“I don’t want to tell you what to do with your body,” he says, and your gut twists a little. “Since it’s yours, and you’re a grown woman, and it’s your responsibility—”

“Last I checked, Jake, it takes two people to make a baby,” you say, and you really wanna punch him. Hard.

“I didn’t mean—that is—not that it’s _solely_ yours, I just mean—well, I—”

You shove a pillow over your head until he stops talking. Then you hit him with it.

“Nice to know I’ll have your support,” you say acidly. “So _great_. Hey, I was worried I was gonna have to do this by my own, but thanks for removing all doubt.”

“I didn’t say—”

“Obviously it’s my body, dude, that’s not the issue here,” you say loudly. “The _issue_ is that _we_ messed up and I thought you’d like a say in what happens next, not that you’d pawn it all off on me!”

“I’m not trying to pawn it off on you!” he snaps back. “If you would listen for a blooming moment—”

You scramble off your bed, into an actual pair of pants, and go to the kitchen. If there are glass things within reach you might be able to restrain yourself from throwing things at him. Maybe.

“If you would _listen_ ,” he says, following, “you’d know that rather than be a reprehensible cad and leaving you in the cold, I’m trying to tell you that I’ll stand behind any decision you bloody well decide to make with your own bloody body!”

“But don’t you want a say in this?” you ask, a little more forcefully than you meant to because, okay, that’s sort of a sweet sentiment he was going for. “I’m just saying, if I decide to actually…y’know… _have_ the baby, you’d be the baby’s dad. I mean, you’re the dad anyway, but if there’s an _actual_ baby—”

“Is that likely?” Jake asks, and he sounds very nervous. “I mean—I mean I know it’s a _possibility_ , but—”

“Okay, hypothetically,” you say, putting down the cereal you were about to pour out, “say I decide to carry the baby to term, and I put it up for adoption. Would you be cool with that?”

He chews his lip. “I don’t…know, just yet.”

“How do you not know?”

“I don’t know how you feel about it, but I’ve just had this sprung onto me a few moments ago,” he frowns. “I need some time to think about this! Why do you need an answer now? I need—I need a few minutes, please!”

You sigh and rub your eyes.

“We have a few weeks to make a decision,” you say around your exhaustion, “but I want to decide what to do as quickly as possible.”

He nods and sits heavily in his chair in the living room. He then says a choice collection of old-timey expletives.

“Word,” you reply.

You don’t wanna crowd the guy, because he does have a point; you’ve had suspicions for a couple weeks and a sinking feeling ever since you checked your birth control pills a few days after he left, so you’ve had some time to try and acclimate to the idea. Though you do wish he wouldn’t try to smile in that way that makes him look like he’s constipated, because that’s him trying to make his “it’s all gonna be okay” face and that face does not make you feel even  marginally better.

You give him a week, during which you keep up correspondence with Jane (and sometimes Dirk, who has been filled in) and a couple of times come over and play with Sebby’s cute little hands and precious little toes. She’s so adorable, you could just eat her up.

(Sometimes you stay up staring at your belly, trying to see something and imagining you’re bigger than you used to be. You imagine a little squirmy thing and while usually that makes you want to go to the doctor to make _sure_ you didn’t get a tapeworm after the last time you went with Jake to the jungle, right now it just kinda makes you feel…full. You’re not sure how to say it, because it’s hard for you to wrap your head around the fact that there’s a jellybean in your candysack and it’s _growing_.)

You ask Jake about it again after a hard day of pacing and deliberating and pausing to throw up.

He doesn’t answer with words, but the way he’s looking at your tummy, you kind of know what he’s about to say.

“I think,” he says finally, “if you want to…I wouldn’t…” he chews his lip. You take pity on him and put your hand on his.

“Just spit it out, Jake,” you say softly. “I trust your opinion and I want your input, okay? You’re my bootylicious babydaddy.”

You both take another moment to get the giggles out.

“If it were up to me,” he laughs, “I think…I don’t know if I would make a good father, but I would like to…maybe have time to find out. I mean…if we want to give the baby up, then we give the baby up, but I think we should…give it a go.”

More or less what you’ve been thinking. You don’t know if you’re mother material, but you think that even if you’re carrying for someone else, you’ve only got the one life, so why not?

You wonder if you consciously made the choice in the womb to make good decisions for bad reasons.

For the rest of the day, you and Jake are pretty cuddly. Another part of you wants to try and label this thing between you two again, but experience has taught you that every attempt before didn’t work for a reason. You are so messed up.

Telling everyone around you is a little more awkward.

For one, Rose sits you down for a very serious conversation, in which she grills you about your relationship and Jake’s willingness to pay child support and you know your Mom is running through her head. She’s been on yours, too. You wish you could call her and ask her about raising a kid, but you don’t even know if you _will_ be raising a kid yet, so there’s no need to bug her. The passive-aggressive war of silence continues.

For another, Jade basically teleports into your apartment, grabs Jake’s collar, and teleports away for the better part of three hours. When he comes back, they’re both sweaty and dirty and sporting rips in their clothing.

“I hope the morning sickness passes for you soon, Roxy,” Jade says sweetly, and hugs you. Jake edges out of the room, his back to a wall, until he’s at the bathroom; he disappears inside fairly quickly.

The window of legality passes. Termination is no longer a failsafe. You’re in this thing for the long haul.

It’s never been more strained in the apartment then when you look at yourself and shriek, because you’re starting to show a little. Just a little. Teeny bit.

Jake goes with you to the appointments, and the first time you agree to listen to the baby’s heartbeat it hits you that you’re actually doing this. You’re making a little life. He grips your hand tight and when you look at him his eyes are a little watery. You grin. Big sap.

Not that you can say much, because you’ve been bawling for ten minutes.

You’re snuggling again, this time in your room; Jake’s more or less moved in, because you’ve woken up too many times to go pee with him sleeping on the floor outside your door. It’s weird, sharing bedspace with him more than every now and then, but it’s not bad, either. He’s taken to touching your belly, his big dark hand tracing circles. His calluses are warm and rough and usually tickle.

“There’s really something growing in there, isn’t there?” he says quietly. His head is resting on your chest while you watch TV, his hand keeping up a soft even tempo against your skin.

“Yup,” you nod. Sometimes you entertain thoughts of keeping your little nugget, but you’re not sure. You look at Jane a lot of the time and think, wow, she’s really good at that. Would you be good at it? Would you just screw it up? Jake’s thumb presses down against your belly, just to the side of your belly button, and he kisses the space above his hand. You wish you loved each other better.

You get into a fight, a huge knock-down-drag-out, when you’re about five months along. You don’t even remember what started the fight, but you _scream_ at him, and he _yells_ back, and it ends with slammed doors and an apartment all to yourself because you had to bring up every fault of his and while it’s not fair of you to call it cheating when you’re not in a relationship, it’s not fair of him to call your pregnancy “the biggest blunderbumbling mistake” you’ve ever made. While true, the emphasis on “you” and the _look_ he gives your stomach, now rounding out obviously, hurts more than any person from his travels he could’ve chosen to talk about or any slap he could’ve given you. Not that he’s ever slapped you. Jake is a gentleman, in that way, at least.

He walks out of the apartment, and you don’t hear from him for almost a month. You don’t especially care. You don’t. You rub your own tummy and feel teeny movements and your heart softens up and turns to mush.

You see Jane and Dirk and Sebby a lot while he’s gone, and you don’t talk about the fight. You coo over Seb’s grabby hands and deflect all of Dirk’s questions. However, before you leave one particularly pleasant afternoon, Jane tells Dirk to put Seb down for a nap and grabs your arm to lead you to her and Dirk’s room, shutting the door behind you.

“Roxy,” she says, and you can’t help it, you burst into tears.

“’m sorry,” you hiccup as you attempt to mop yourself up, “I’m being so— _stupid_ , I don’t—”

“I won’t pretend to understand what you and Jake have with each other,” she says, guiding you to sit on her bed, “but I am not going to stand idly by while you two make each other miserable.”

You kind of just cry all over her and get mascara on her shirt and massage your belly. You think you mighta upset the little jellybean, because it’s nudging you something fierce. You had a chance to find out the gender, but you didn’t want to know because at the time you were thinking that any attempt at making a connection with the kid might be bad. You’re thinking of giving it up for adoption, after all. But your tummy sort of flutters with all the movement and you just cry harder.

You and Jane don’t really have a good conversation, because as soon as you dry your eyes Seb starts crying and Dirk calls for Jane, so you just hug her and go back home. Dirk’s hand looks messed-up, you notice. Did he jam it in the crib or something?

Jake is there when you get home, looking at his feet, fiddling with his fingers behind his back, scuffing a toe around, and if he doesn’t just look like the biggest kid ever…

“I’m sorry, Roxy,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said anything I did. It was completely brutish of me.”

“Yes,” you nod, “it was.”

He hunches a little, and looks up, and you see he’s got a black eye. Your tense worry melts away to genuine dismay.

“Jake, what happened?” you ask, coming towards him, and he lets you inspect his face.

“Dirk,” he says ruefully, and you guess that explains the bruise on Dirk’s hand. “And Jade.” He pulls up his shirt and you see another mottled collection of bruises. “It seems the only way to break through my dadburned skull is by beating through.”

You knock his forehead with your knuckles. “Earth to Jake. When we decided to go full-term with this baby, it was with the understanding we’d _both_ be here. Through morning sickness and swollen feet and weird cravings.”

He sort of cups your baby bump with his hands, and you put your arms around him while he leans his forehead against yours.

“I’m so sorry,” he says again, and you nod.

“I am, too.”

He kisses your forehead. “I do love you, Roxy.”

You give him a squeeze as his hands transfer to your back. “I know. I love you too, Jake. A lot.”

He sighs. You sigh. The baby sort of nudges him, too, and he laughs, dropping to his knees and talking at your baby bump.

You _wish_ you loved each other better.

You’re not sure what Jade has said to him—twice now—but he’s almost perfectly attentive after that. It’s a little freaky. But at the same time, you don’t wanna bring it up, either. Don’t want a repeat performance. It’s getting a bit hard to walk around and you like having a strapping young man fetching things for you.

You are seven months along when you wake up with a sharp pain in your belly and you know to your core something is wrong.

Jake driving while tired is an experience you don’t want to go through again, but you kept your eyes shut through most of it so it ain’t bad. You get looked at while your belly keeps panging away and after lots of talking and lots of questions and lots of getting hooked up to an IV drip…you’re told you are to be on bedrest for the rest of your pregnancy, for the safety of you and the baby.

That isn’t so bad, you say at first, because you have cankles for the first time in your life and you spend most of your time on your butt, anyway.

It is eight days later and you are practically clawing the walls looking for something else to do.

Jake is darling. He gets coloring books and word puzzles that you do together, and fetches your laptop when you get bored of that too and want to pay your wildberry hacker friend a visit. You pwn the dweeb, ask if he’s going easy on you just because you’re pregnant, and receive a virus that is no more than a looping .gif of the most judgmental expression you have ever seen on a cat. You take it down after you finish laughing.

You are nine months along and miserable when you and Jake finally have that talk you’ve been wanting to have for a couple weeks now.

You still don’t know what the gender of the baby is, or what it looks like beyond a few grainy images, or anything like that, because you are…unsure. You think it would be most responsible to put the baby up for adoption, and you should’ve been scouting out searching couples months ago. But another part of you…well…

Jake has just finished rubbing your feet and is snuggling in beside you while you rest your overlarge belly on a pillow so you can be on your side. You’re not actually sure if you’re allowed to do that if you’re not allowed to stand up for extended periods of time, but whatever, you’re not in any unusual amounts of discomfort. The kid is lively tonight.

“So what are we gonna do, Jake?” you ask, and he pauses his absent belly-touching. His attachment to your prego body is unfathomable. Well, maybe it is a little fathomable, since it’s his fault you’re like this. “We’ve gotta think about this. Talk it out. For serious, now.”

Jake’s dark green eyes seem a little more shaded than usual. “What are you considering?”

You frown. You hate it when he deflects like this. “I want to know your thoughts.”

“Traditionally, I am told, it is the lady who is with child you listen to about any and all baby decisions,” Jake says, but in a light way and with a wink that lets you know he’s playing. “What I think…what I really think is that perhaps it is in the child’s best interest if we give it away to someone more capable.”

Precisely what you were thinking. And yet, and yet. You sigh.

“Yeah. I think so, too.”

“So. Is that what we’re going to do?”

“I guess so.”

Neither of you move. You rest your free hand on your belly. Jake covers it up with one of his own and holds it, warm even against your overheated skin.

It stands to reason, of course, that you’d go into labor a mere twenty-four hours after this conversation.

It’s a few hours’ wait before you’re dilated enough, of course, a few hours of raging discomfort and arguing over epidural versus all-natural (when he gives birth, you say, he can do it naturally. You want the juice). When the pain kinda makes you wanna punch things and your feet are up in stirrups, it starts to become a little more real to you that _you’re having a baby_.

You clutch Jake’s hand and push when they tell you to push, but after a few minutes the encouragement from the doctor betwixt your nethers sort of dies down and you are told sharply to stop pushing.

“What’s going on?” Jake asks as your feet are taken down.

“Something’s wrong down here,” the doctor says. “We’re going to need to do an emergency C-section.”

Oh, boy.

They give you the laughing gas once you’re in the room and your view of your lower body is blocked by a divider, and Jake holds your hand and you feel all fuzzy and Jake’s fuzzy and wow that is some good stuff can you just kinda take some home because _yeeeeeeeee_.

You are out of it, but you can still hear it when there is a tiny, tiny cry from somewhere around your midsection.

“It’s a boy,” someone says, and the crying doesn’t increase in volume but becomes a little more insistent as there is applause and more tending to your open body.

“A boy,” Jake says in wonder, and you blink slowly and griiiiin.

“Bet he’s all pretty like you, Jakey,” you say. “Jakey, Jakey, we made a baby.”

“We sure did,” he says, and touches your forehead. Things get a little…dark…after that.

You wake up warm and sore and with your boobs _killing_ you.

Jake’s passed out in the chair beside your bed, and you clear your throat a couple of times.

“Jake.”

He jolts awake, so comically, and runs to your side.

“Roxy? Are you alright? You started fading out after they got the baby out—”

“All cool, Jakey-wakey,” you say, and feel dizzy. “How’s the tater tot?”

“Healthy,” Jake nods, and his face breaks out in a huge grin. “He’s perfect, so dadburned perfect.”

You sigh and grin. “Can we see him?”

Your baby is presented to you in short order.

His skin is almost as dark as Jake’s, perfectly smooth and soft, and his hair is not quite as plentiful or as dark as Sebby’s was but he is so tiny and so beautiful and you hold him and help him nurse for the first time and you know in your gut you are not letting him go. You mutely look up at Jake, who looks back at you, and you both sort of giggle.

“Should we get married?” Jake asks you, and shake your head.

“If I’d marry anyone, I’d wanna marry you, but I don’t think that’s the right choice for us,” you say, tracing that sorta-shapeless little face with a finger. “We don’t love each other quite that way.”

“No,” he agrees, and climbs in bed beside you, “but it’s a nice thought.”

You nod. “Is the jellybean gonna have both his parentals, though?”

“Always,” Jake says, and kisses your forehead. “I’m so proud of you, Roxy.”

“Thanks for staying,” you say, and he squeezes your shoulder.

The kid’s got your eyes, freaky-deaky pinky. Pink is your color again.

With some consultation from a rather stern Rosie, you name him Jasper Dane English-Lalonde, and although it’s a mouthful you know you want him to know exactly where he came from—that although you and his father aren’t exactly in love in the conventional way that you still care about each other more than almost anything and you both love him most. Parenthood is hard. Super hard. Hardest thing you’ve ever done together. But Jake changes diapers and heats up bottles and walks around the house bouncing Jasper while he’s fussy (though that rarely happens, kid is so _quiet_ ), and there are times Jake kisses and touches you and you kiss and touch him and wonder if it’s wrong to still want him that way when the proof that you two doing stuff like this is a bad idea is sleeping a couple rooms over.

Your name is Roxy Lalonde. Your life is a mess of feelings and spit-up and if you sit down to think about it, you can’t imagine it being any other way. Well, you can, but you love what you’ve got and even if you’re not in love with your babydaddy you still love him. And your son—your Jazzy Jasper-baby—is the center of your universe.

Any other way? Sure. It coulda happened. But it happened this way. And you don’t regret a thing.


End file.
